


New Myths

by horrorgremlin (catstuff)



Series: Once Bitten [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Modification, Catharsis, Drug use (weed), Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Masochism, PTSD, Platonic intimate violence, Tenderness, Transgender Characters, Vampires, binding, recovering from abuse, sensory issues, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23757727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catstuff/pseuds/horrorgremlin
Summary: Grayson doesn’t know how long he’s been crying now, and it feels like he’s heaved out all the fluids in his body, all the breath that shouldn’t be in his lungs, air he doesn’t need but takes and takes and wastes and wastes for what? To have a mental breakdown in a stranger’s bed?
Series: Once Bitten [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702981





	New Myths

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: PTSD, trauma-informed intimacy, violence in intimate context, masochism, gender dysphoria, burning flesh, disordered eating.

Grayson tries to spend the night on the couch — he insists on being as little an inconvenience as possible — but even the sanctity of Isaac’s walls doesn’t stop the nightmares he’s been suffering since he left Chicago last year. He doubles up the blanket over his head and buries his face in the dusty cushions as he dry-sobs, trying not to make too much noise.

Isaac hears him anyway. They creep down to the second floor, lay a hand on Grayson’s back, and silently guide him up to their own room. He shouldn’t be alone, they think. He’s been alone for too long already. The two of them huddle under layers of blankets, Isaac drifting in and out of sleep as Grayson drifts in and out of shaking and crying fits. Isaac can’t tell if he’s just too beside himself to talk about it, or if he’s not much of a talker in general.

Grayson bemoans having already chain-smoked his entire pack of cigarettes, and Isaac remembers something and puts down Grayson’s hand and climbs out of bed. They open a cupboard and extract an ashtray with a half-smoked joint in it, offering it as an alternative. Grayson hesitates, then says he’ll smoke it if Isaac will have some of it with him. They agree to the terms.

Isaac takes a couple small hits, while Grayson inhales hard enough that the ember crackles as it flares twice as bright. When he can’t physically hold the roach any more, he stubs it out with burnt fingertips. Finally, his body starts to spread out, almost imperceptibly at first, until he overcomes or loses his self-consciousness and unhunches himself, picking up his hands and setting them back down on either side of himself as if he’s not quite sure where they belong.

He turns and meets Isaac’s eyes with a blank stare. They try to offer him a smile, and he ducks his head back down on instinct, so they look away instead. Patience is one of their strong suits, and they have a feeling Grayson is working up to saying something. The weed has settled into their body as a persistent mild buzz, making them feel pleasantly heavy, neither waking them up nor putting them to sleep.

Grayson’s mouth opens and closes as he gropes for a path to connection. He settles on: “You said you don’t... you used to bind?”

Well, that’s not what Isaac expected, but they don’t mind talking about it, especially to someone else who’s going through the same thing.

“Mmhm,” they hum. “On and off for like. G-d, I don’t know, since before commercial binders? Until about five, six years ago.”

The next question comes just as slowly. “Why did you stop?”

“Ah.” Isaac’s cheeks flush, just a little. They unzip their sweatshirt and shrug it off their shoulders. Underneath is a faded tank top, the low neck and loose fit revealing a substantial area of cracked, darkened skin — and a completely flat profile.

Something terrible flashes through Grayson’s eyes at the sight of the scars, but the association is gone as quickly as it comes. He blinks, and stares, and is too high to try and cover his expressions of pain, confusion, awe, jealousy, shame. Isaac feels a pang of guilt, like they’re offering the wrong ray of hope for the moment, too intense and angled askew.

“What happened?” Grayson finally asks.

The flush on Isaac’s face spreads to their ears.

“I burned them off. With sunlight.”

The look on Grayson’s face says: Holy shit. When Isaac doesn’t take initiative to elaborate, he asks, voice strained, “How?”

Isaac tilts their head slowly to the side, taking Grayson in through half-lidded eyes. “Whoever turned you, they didn’t teach you the basics, did they? To make sure you don’t get yourself killed or accidentally kill someone right off the bat. Even the assholes usually make some attempt, if they’ve bothered to turn someone.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Grayson says, bitter and venomous.

“Ah.” Of course it was her; they should have realized. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” The silence is palpably uncomfortable, and Isaac is relieved when Grayson breaks it again. “Can I. Can I touch it?”

“Yeah.”

They turn to face each other. Grayson raises his hand, inch by inch, until he’s ghosting the calloused pads of his fingers over the shiny, knotted skin of Isaac’s sternum.

He gulps. “Does it hurt?”

They smile, just a little bit sadly. “Not any more.”

-

When Grayson wakes up in the morning, Isaac’s not in bed, and there’s a curious odor wafting through the house. Pulling a heavy blanket around himself and dragging it with him, he trundles downstairs.

Isaac is at the stove, wearing sweatpants and nothing on top, poking at a pan of eggs. They turn to wave hello with their spatula, cutting off a whistled tune with an empathetic chuckle as they see Grayson’s grumpy face peering from a mobile blanket cocoon.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

That’s what the smell is, Grayson thinks, sinking into a kitchen chair. He hasn’t thought about human food in so long; it hasn’t _smelled_ like food in so long...

“Okay,” his stomach answers through his mouth, and he’s surprised to recognize a hunger born of desire and appetite, rather than clawing, ravenous need. It’s a very pleasant change, especially experienced from within the cushiony blanket-veil of half-sleep. When Isaac sets a full plate in front of him, Grayson doesn’t think twice about digging in — though he does pause after a couple bites to ask for hot sauce.

Isaac continues buzzing around the kitchen, washing and wiping and sorting things. As Grayson’s brain begins to absorb the much-needed nutrition, it occurs to him that he’s the only one eating.

“Are you gonna have any?”

“Nah, vampires don’t really need to eat,” comes the automatic answer.

Grayson takes a moment to chew and swallow another bite.

“Then why’d you make breakfast?”

Isaac starts midstep and almost trips over themselves.

“Force of habit, I guess?” They seem as confused as Grayson does, if not more. “I dunno, it just seems like a nice thing to do when there’s someone else here.”

Grayson shrugs a shoulder out of the blanket and reaches to help himself to a bottle of water.

“Do you have human guests a lot, then?”

Isaac takes the seat opposite Grayson at the tiny kitchen table.

“I mentioned yesterday,” they prompt, but at Grayson’s look of fearful incomprehension they soften and amend, “You were pretty out of it yesterday.”

Grayson studies the bottom of his plate, pushing his fork through the ketchup smears like a rake through a goopy zen garden.

“Yeah. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Isaac doesn’t have to say that it’s okay, or that they know how Grayson feels. They just reach across the table and squeeze his hand.

-

At first, the burns remind Grayson too much of Fletcher stumbling back to their campsite after the crash, wan and dislocated at every juncture, sections of his bare skin tortured into charred, hardened twists.

But the horrific association falls away so quickly at the meaning beneath these burns: Isaac’s shirt hangs undisturbed over their cracked, ruddy chest, and Grayson feels in his gut, though it sounds wrong when he puts words to it, that these scars mean _peace_.

The tangibility of Isaac’s body is almost enough to wreck him then. His self-consciousness peels back and flakes away like layers of pastry; he lays both hands across Isaac’s sternum, fingertips resting at the line where the soft skin below their clavicles begins to tighten. He wants to touch it from every angle. It’s perfect.

The unsettling sensation of his ribs straining against his binder, which he’s used to ignoring, comes into such sudden and clear focus that he wants to puke. The fabric, rough on the inside and glossy on the outside, is still warmly damp under the dry layers he’s borrowed from Isaac. He wants out of it, and he wants to never take it off, and he wants to stop having to choose things that hurt and ignoring knives lodged between his ribs. The comforting high of the weed is lost to him amid all this suffering.

Before he knows it, Grayson is sobbing bare-faced, hands still pressed to Isaac’s chest and knotting themselves into the fabric of their undershirt. It’s too real, and he hasn’t been living — maybe ever. Isaac seems to understand what’s happening, taking Grayson by the shoulders and pulling him in for a hug, squeezing tight, but leaving space between their bodies from the chest down. Grayson’s arms collapse in on themselves, instinctively pulling back from Isaac’s chest to shield his own, but he doesn’t pull away.

Isaac waits for Grayson to calm and quiet before offering a tentative suggestion.

“Do you want me to help you take it off? If I lay it by a window, it should be dry by the time you get up tomorrow.” They leave unsaid the very real possibility that neither of them will be getting much sleep tonight.

Grayson shifts his weight and the two let go of each other, Isaac sitting up straight and Grayson curled around his folded hands.

“Yeah,” he decides. “Yeah, please, before I change my mind.” Frantically, he starts trying to unbutton his borrowed flannel.

Isaac lets him do it himself, even with his unsteady hands; the less they need to touch him for this, the easier it will be. He gets through the buttons, but gets trapped in his t-shirt until Isaac untangles it and pulls it off his head.

Down to his binder, Grayson already feels more naked than he wants to be. The surface of the garment is mottled with layers of sweat stains from inhumanly long wear. If the up-close wet-vampire stink bothers Isaac, they don’t show it.

“What would you like me to do?”

Grayson tests at grabbing the binder’s bottom edge and finds his arms numb and heavy. He swallows, dry and scratchy, then raises his arms weakly over his head. “Can you pull it off?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Grayson closes his eyes tightly in a preemptive wince. Isaac raises up onto their knees and leans one hip against the wall for stability. With delicate fingers, they find what they think are the right spots to grab on to.

“And I won’t look if I can help it. I promise.”

This makes Grayson relax ever so slightly. Isaac braces themselves and tugs.

It feels like it takes hours, with all the long pauses and small adjustments. The process is uncomfortable on almost every imaginable level. Grayson growls and chews his lip and tongue to bits in an effort not to lash out. Sometimes his strength falters and he falls back on crying, but he restrains himself as best he can even then, his raised hands clenched white-knuckle tight at the ends of his shaking, dead arms, bitten-down nails digging toothlessly into his palms.

It’s worse, not better, when the binder rolls up far enough that his ribs ache free and his chest remembers gravity. As soon as Isaac drags it past the hump of his shoulders, he tears it off and curls in on himself tightly, hissing and incoherent, teeth deep in the meat of his own hand.

-

Isaac’s bathroom holds only the necessities: a cramped little porcelain tub, surrounded by cracked tiles; an ancient-looking showerhead that might be too rusty to adjust even if it wasn’t mounted absurdly high; a sink, no counter, with two toothbrushes resting precariously between the knobs and the wall; a toilet with a mismatched plastic seat. The little rug on the floor is threadbare, and the shower curtain is full of weird little holes. But the towels are decent — and Grayson literally can’t remember his last shower.

He emerges in a billow of steam, feeling begrudgingly like a new man in his now-dry binder and another borrowed outfit. The lighting in the apartment is dully warm, mostly diffuse sunlight peeking between blinds and around the edges of curtains, with a few odd lamps to boost the darkest corners. Isaac is in the kitchen, drying the last of the breakfast dishes, and Grayson stops in the doorway to watch, still loosely ruffling a towel over his hair.

For the first time, he’s cognizant enough to notice the thin-lined tattoos scattered over Isaac’s upper back and down their shoulders. Each one that Grayson can make out appears to be a simple illustration of a single open eye, mostly similar in style, but none identical. The black ink doesn’t appear fresh, but it stands out sharply on their pale pink skin.

When Isaac turns around and sees Grayson, there’s a moment where it seems they’re about to jump out of their skin, but they rein it in quickly.

“You startled me.” Their tone is good-natured. “How was the shower?”

“Fantastic. Thanks again.”

“And again: you’re welcome. Of course. No problem.” Isaac smiles and walks past Grayson to sit on the living room couch.

Grayson follows and sits beside them, echoing their smile in spite of himself. After a brief companionable silence, he gestures at Isaac’s tattoos and asks, “You get those before you got turned?”

“Actually, no.”

Grayson is stunned into momentary silence.

“What?”

“I have this old friend,” Isaac says, settling into the couch cushions, “who’s really into body modification, and spent a while trying to figure out how to make them stick on vampire bodies.”

“Okay, but you can’t just go out and get a tattoo, right?”

“Oh, no. Sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you — you’re right, normally it’s more or less impossible to make major changes to a vampire’s body. Because it heals. Get something pierced, it rejects within a week if you starve yourself the whole time, within minutes if you’ve recently fed. You can actually watch the skin push it out.”

Grayson wrinkles his nose. “Tattoos, though?”

“You can’t even finish them. The speed a tattoo artist has to go, and the size and depth of the wounds, the line practically vanishes as they go, like disappearing ink. Kind of cool, but really disappointing. If you try to slow down the healing by not feeding for a while before or after, it just makes the skin thinner and it doesn’t hold the ink as well in the first place.”

Grayson nods. His hands itch for a cigarette, a bottle, a glass, anything to hold onto to ground himself, but he really wants to hear this and for fuck’s sake, he should be able to get through one damn conversation without a poisonous prop.

“So what Wretch figured out, was to basically... supersize the entire process. Bigger needles, more needles, something like that — I didn’t really want to know the details of that part. Still haven’t asked.” They chuckle. “But a stronger machine, and one that goes deeper into the skin, probably deeper than would be really safe or healthy for humans.”

Isaac folds one arm to their chest and curls their hand back to finger one of the lined eyes, the one that creeps the farthest over the top of their shoulder, right by the lingering bite marks.

“And it spent a _long_ time on every single part. Tattooing in slow motion. It had impressively steady hands.” Their smile has a hint of a smirk, some private memory held behind it.

“It?”

“Wretch. It’s technically human.” The private smirk quirks up again. “It’s a witch — not an especially good witch, but that got it involved in supernatural business and from there it was probably inevitable it would get obsessed with supernatural body modification.”

Grayson tries to skim past the wealth of information he’s missing, because this Wretch person sounds fascinating, and also, witches?, but he wants to stay focused on where he is and who he’s talking to now. When he recognizes the desire, it feels like deja vu; he skims past that, too.

“How did you wind up getting so many? If it was that much pain and effort...”

Isaac’s smirk opens up, losing the irony and the secrecy but retaining the same flint-on-steel nostalgia, and they blush faintly.

“I helped it test its theories until it found the magic formula. You know I, ah. Have a high pain tolerance.”

-

Grayson snarls and lashes out when Isaac tries to touch him, clawing almost randomly at the air. When they back off sufficiently, he curls back up and digs his stubby nails into his own arms.

“Can I help?” It hurts Isaac to watch this. They know they can’t fix it for him, but they’ll offer whatever they can give.

Grayson shakes his head hard, growling in frustration, “Nothing can help, I just don’t want to feel anything, nothing helps.”

They want to reach for him again, but not if they’ll get the same result. “Can I try?”

“No. Please don’t.”

Isaac wavers. The worst possible outcome would be that they try and it winds up retraumatizing him rather than helping. But instinct tells them that there’s something more here, just a little further down. They risk a hard question.

“Why?”

This time they’re already braced for it when Grayson swings an arm in their direction, but it still makes them flinch. Missing them, he picks up the nearest solid object and throws it as hard as he can. Something breaks somewhere.

“Because it’s not safe!” He bellows, turning suddenly to Isaac with wide, frenzied eyes that remind them of a spooked horse frothing at the mouth. “Everything around me breaks! I’m a fucking monster and all I’m good for is violence and running away!”

Here’s their chance to try.

“I’m a monster too,” Isaac says firmly, reaching to grip Grayson’s shoulder. “And you can’t break me.”

His initial reaction is hurt and confused, almost as if he’s been rejected. Then, in the blink of an eye, he slides back into easy, comfortable anger. He knocks Isaac’s hand away, but it comes right back, and then another one, and Grayson is screaming and trying to get away, to kill something, but Isaac’s stupid skinny arms are calmer and more focused than his, corralling him inward, until Grayson’s panic takes over and he jerks out of Isaac’s grip with all his might, backhanding them in the eye in the process.

They don’t try to run. They don’t try to hurt him back. They barely even wince. They just reach out again and take him by the upper arm, and he breaks away again, and they let him hit and push and pound them with his fists, responding each time with unwavering kindness. His stamina starts to fade as his adrenaline rush wears out, but as Isaac pulls him in toward themselves, his rage boils over and he resorts to his most primal weapon, biting hard into the only meaty part of Isaac’s shoulder. He jerks his head, desperate to exorcise some pain, and Isaac grunts quietly as Grayson’s fangs yank and tear at the tense ridge of muscle. He’s still trying to hit them, but his arms are going limp with regrets. They won’t budge. He digs his teeth in; cautiously, they wrap their arms around his back. Grayson breathes hard through his nose with panic, scratching weakly at Isaac’s back through their shirt. Their chest bumping against his is a screaming beacon, but not worse than any other state his unbound chest could be in, and Isaac’s solid grip around him keeps it safely sandwiched where nothing else can touch it.

After a long time, Grayson lets his jaw go limp and takes his teeth out of Isaac’s shoulder, laying his head down to watch the thin blood that oozes from their torn and slowly-bruising skin. He finds his arms, and with fear and gratitude, he returns their embrace.

They’re fine. They’re still here. They’re still holding him.

-

Grayson hasn’t touched his violin since Isaac took him in a day and a half ago, and it’s a relief to have it back in his hands, tracing the map of old scuffs and scratches that make it feel like the closest thing he has now to home. It’s still fine, of course; Isaac has a gentle touch and it’s been waiting in a corner since they brought Grayson inside. But with the changing weather, the tuning should need adjustment.

Isaac lounges on the couch.

“How long have you played?”

“I don’t know.”

He’s sitting on the hard trunk in front of the sofa, better for his posture than the sunken cushions. He rests the violin against his chest, leans into it as one leans against a lover, and plays a few long, steady notes. It sounds okay.

“Since I was a kid, I guess. My grandfather used to play. But after he died we just had his violin sitting around collecting dust. So I started taking lessons.”

He finishes adjusting the tuning pegs and plays the same three resonant notes. Isaac can tell that the harmony is truer than before.

Grayson begins a slow, sad melody, pausing to tweak the pegs as he goes. Isaac recognizes it from the other day, when they first saw him playing across the street in the rain. It’s a stirring, melancholic tune. They think they know it from somewhere, but where or when, they can’t say. By the end of the song, he’s finished adjusting the tuning, and he plays the last minute uninterrupted.

“That was beautiful,” Isaac says when he’s finished.

“Thanks,” Grayson says uncomfortably. He lowers the instrument from his chest and gives it an ambivalent look. “I only know how to play sad songs.”

Isaac extends a hand. “Could I?”

Grayson passes the violin and bow with a puzzled look. “You know how to play?”

“I’ve dabbled,” Isaac answers, in a way that says there’s a story there, but they don’t say any more. The two of them swap seats. Isaac takes a minute settling the violin above their collarbone, their sharp jaw against the chin rest, and another to ghost over the fingerboard, refamiliarizing themselves with the shape of the chords and the feel of the strings. Their hands are soft these days, but the bite of the strings on their fingertips doesn’t bother them.

They play a note, and another — they don’t quite remember how the song goes — and a melody emerges, halting and off-beat. Not quite a joyful tune, but a comforting one, almost hopeful. Grayson’s not sure if he’s heard it before.

He stretches a foot out to nudge Isaac’s ankle. Isaac pauses their playing to nudge back; the two of them smile at each other. Then Isaac raises the bow and continues their song.

-

Grayson doesn’t know how long he’s been crying now, and it feels like he’s heaved out all the fluids in his body, all the breath that shouldn’t be in his lungs, air he doesn’t need but takes and takes and wastes and wastes for what? To have a mental breakdown in a stranger’s bed?

His mind is shouting at him that he’s more than exceeded his welcome here, he should just go except he’s too much of a weakling and a coward, he’s waiting for the moment that Isaac gets too sick of him and kicks him out or knocks him down. It’s like teetering on the very edge of a cliff, staring at the long way down, with no control. Isaac seems to have infinite patience, but that’s always true until it isn’t.

Isaac rubs his back in slow, soft circles, faintly humming an old Polish lullaby. Now that Grayson has run out of crying, he realizes he’s snotted all over Isaac’s bare shoulder, and everything else there is dissolves into shame. Isaac is the only thing holding him up now, and he collapses against their chest, spent.

They massage their fingers against his scalp, and press a chaste, dry kiss on his forehead. Miraculously, their touch is starting to have the desired effect, lulling Grayson into a quieter emotional state. He opens his eyes on a close-up of Isaac’s chest and stares blearily at their scars, reading the faint patterns within like a bedtime story.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and then slowly falls asleep.


End file.
